By Rob Hubbard
June 9, 2017
SPCO concertmaster Steven Copes took the stage as soloist for Jalbert’s Violin Concerto. By turns haunting and menacing in the early going, the two-movement concerto became an absorbing meditation on which Copes’ lines grew more agitated, the orchestra summoning up dark drama. Often taking on an antiphonal structure — Copes and the other violins engaging in a kind of call-and-response exchange — the first movement exploded into a climactic cadenza before Copes articulated a compelling longing atop vaporous, whispering strings.
The concerto’s second movement had a more fragmented feel, themes often introduced and abandoned, but Copes wove a transfixing spell atop Jalbert’s evocative orchestration, be the ensemble chiming like funeral bells or providing a glassy, glimmering foundation for the soloist’s aggressive final cadenza.
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